Setbacks in Independence

We've been going backwards a little these days. It happens. Frustrating, though.

Until the last month or so, the Lone Star Baby had almost always been able to get her shoes on the right feet without assistance, Suddenly, though, they were mixed up as often as not. I was confused. Then I had an epiphany. Until the time they started getting mixed up, the Lone Star Baby had mainly been wearing Dora shoes and she knew that the pictures of Dora were supposed to go on the outsides. She got a new pair of shoes with a uniform butterfly print and, without the help of a distinguishing feature, had no idea whether they were on the right feet or not. We wrote her initial in sharpie on the outsides of the rubber part of the shoes, and now she gets them right.

The Lone Star Baby has been a real pro at potty learning. She was mostly dry, day and night, well before summer and during the summer, I came to trust her dryness so much that I even took away night-time pull-ups. She then quickly went from about an accident a week to an accident a month to hardly any accidents ever. Months ago. Lately, she's back to having about one a week. This seems to be a combination of the fact that she has developed an aversion to wiping and flushing and wants someone along to "help her" and the typical child's resistance to abandoning interesting play for the bathroom. She's not doing it at school where it might embarrass her, which is fairly telling. Also, I think the blue stuff I put in the potty really does distress her a bit. I won't get more of it when it all flushes away. Sigh.